


By Sunrise

by stardustsroses



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, some alarkling fluff, the one where i cry a lot because this ship has ruined me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 10:04:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17159987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustsroses/pseuds/stardustsroses
Summary: Ruin and Rising // alternative line of events //. Alina and Nikolai have the advantage, and finally the chance to bring The Darkling down once and for all. Aleksander has not come to Alina - so tonight she is the one to come to him. But she meant to say goodbye, not stay in his arms.





	By Sunrise

He is simply a boy clad in black.  
He kneels on the floor in front of his fireplace, the flames distorted and soft, not bringing the smallest bit of warmth into this dark room with the black satin sheets and black walls and black windows, where the night outside welcomes a storm like no other she has ever seen. In the distance, thunder awakening.  
He is a boy.  
A boy with hunched shoulders, head bowed low, arms wrapped around himself as if the cold has entered his bones, as if the storm has been living in his heart all along.  
He is a boy who knows he has lost.  
Just a boy.  
Embraced in darkness.  
And she watches his back, the curl of his hair at the nape of his neck, the strain on those shoulders, the weight that lies there, that has always been there, pushing him down, drowning him, sinking him into the icy waters below.  
Alina sees a boy, and not the man that she threatened. The man that once before, a lifetime ago it now seems, threatened her.  
She could take a step towards him and touch a finger to that curl that never sits right or let her hand squeeze his shoulder in a gentle gesture, one that would rid him of those terrible years of cruelty and anger and bitter resentment.  
He does not turn, but Alina knows that he is aware of her presence by the sudden stillness of him. By the shift in his breathing.  
She always knew his subtle changes.  
He turns his face just slightly, the line of his profile a drawn image in front of her, coloured in the reds and oranges and soft yellows of the flames. They crack and snap in time with his breathing. She feels as if she is not breathing at all when those grey eyes move up to her face.  
Such bitter, beautiful eyes.  
Tragic eyes.  
“I have come to say goodbye to you.”  
He knows he has lost, yes. But the grey eyes tell her a different story – they are steel, immovable and undefeated. Defiant, still.  
“How many goodbyes have you thrown my way, Alina?”  
She watches him move and lift himself up in this place that is not really a place. It is a world of their own creation, something to be shared for all eternity, even when one or the other is no longer on this earth.  
“This is the last time,” she says. “By sunrise, I will be gone.”  
Gone from your mind, your sight, your heart.  
His standing figure is still imposing, even in this non-reality of theirs. It takes her a few seconds to start breathing again, and a few seconds more to keep herself from walking to him, and maybe place a hand – or both hands – on his cheeks, make him look at her in the eyes and-  
Tell him something she cannot say out loud.  
For both their sakes.  
“Give up Ravka,” she murmurs to him instead. “Give it to Nikolai.”  
He leans a forearm against the fireplace mantel, a hand closing into a fist. His anger flicking and cracking like the flames below. His silhouette on the floor wavers and shakes.  
Alina swallows the hard lump in her throat, and attempts to untie that knot that stops her from speaking, from breathing. “We have the three amplifiers. You cannot win this war, Aleksander.”  
At the mention of his name, his hand begins to open slowly.  
Inside his palm he holds a ring he had not been holding before. A small, delicate thing. He is not looking at her, but at the window at his left, eyes stuck to the roaring storm and the rain that tickles down the window. There is no light left outside.  
Alina watches him play with that ring, so silent.  
When he speaks, it’s soft. “Once upon a time, we meant you and me.”  
Alina stands very still, watching that sparkling gem he holds. “Once upon a time, I thought you might not betray me. You did. You betrayed me.”  
“You betrayed me too.”  
“I had reason to.”  
“And I did not,” he mutters, closing his eyes, a bitter smile on his face. “All I wanted-“  
“You wanted a safe country, and a safe people, and a stable throne you could sit on. You wanted good things, Aleksander. You did not do good things to obtain them.”  
He finally turns to her. Faces her.  
Alina will forever remember that look in his eyes – that resigned, near-guilty look he gave her. And the love that shone there, too.  
He loves her, she believes it.  
She believes it as much she believes that that love lives in her heart, too. Despite every single one of her protest, it does. It still does.  
Even a defeated man can still hope, she thinks. And here’s him hoping she’ll stay – silently begging her to. With a ring in one hand. A ring meant for her.  
He takes a step toward her, tentative.  
Hope is a strange emotion on him. Vulnerability she recognizes, but doesn’t want to believe.  
Him being vulnerable, being real, will only make this goodbye, this last time, harder than it needs to be.  
Another step.  
Another mask thrown to the floor. Another pile of bitterness and anger and resentment thrown out the window.  
And another, and another.  
She lets him get close.  
Until he is bare, staring at her with the grey eyes she knows-  
And loves.  
A boy who knows he lost – lost more than a throne.  
And a boy begging to be loved, to be rid of the darkness.  
“Alina,” he whispers.  
And she knows. She knows she goes against everything she has told herself the past few days – months – and everything she stands for the moment she says, “You have not come to me.”  
He stays silent, watching her.  
A step separates them. Will she take it?  
“You would think I was manipulating you,” he responds, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “Why come now, Alina? You have the arms of your prince waiting for you.”  
“You are no victim,” she says quietly.  
“And yet you will watch me fall and believe me to be one, won’t you?” He says. “I wonder. Will it be you to hold the sword to my throat in the end?”  
“I will not kill you,” she says. “I think the darkness has already taken whatever was left of you. I recognize nothing of the man that I-“  
She stops herself, and the cruel remark that was about to leave her lips.  
It is a lie, and of course she is aware, and of course it falls flat, and of course he does not buy it. Because when he cocks his head slightly to the side, watching her, she sees the man he could be in his eyes, if only given the chance.  
But she can barely save herself. How can she save him?  
“Tell me one thing,” he says. “One truth.”  
Her feet feel stuck to the ground, heavy and hard like steel.  
“Do you love him?”  
A moment’s pause. Alina thinks she might hear a flutter of wings outside, but it is unlikely in a storm like this for a bird to take flight. So maybe it is her heart.  
“Yes.”  
“Tell me another truth,” he says. “Do you love him like you love me?”  
“No.”  
It should have hurt. It should have shaken her heartstrings to have been this blunt, to have admitted to such a thing. But maybe Alina could bear to shed a skin or two.  
“Tell me a truth,” she murmurs to him. “Is that ring for me?”  
“It was,” he says. “When I thought you would take it.”  
Alina sucks in a shaky breath. “Give up Ravka. I do not want to go to war with you.”  
“We already are at war, Alina.” He says calmly, like a man who has already made peace with his fate. “You and me have always been at war.”  
“You yourself said that we were united once. Was that a lie?”  
“I thought you wanted the same things that I did,” he says, wounded. “I would have crawled through the entire world twice to get to you, Alina.”  
She stares at him, sight blurring, head shaking. “You would have destroyed this world, Aleksander.”  
“Yes,” he admits, seemingly breathless. A piece of his hair falls on his forehead, untamed. “Yes. For you. For peace, and for Ravka. For us.”  
“You had to have known that you were wrong then,” she says. “You had to have known the harm you were causing everyone. The harm you were causing me.”  
For a moment, a flicker of pain strikes his eyes, darkening them. He pulls back slightly, as if he has been slapped, as if the truth of her words hitting him for the hundredth time are still as heartbreaking to him as the first time he realized it. The first time he realized the pain he had caused her.  
“No,” he says slowly, looking through her. “No, I did not.”  
“And now?” Alina attempts.  
A single nod. A desperation in his eyes that she cannot stand.  
“Aleksander,” she whispers. He closes his eyes, conflict written in every feature.  
“Did your heart ache for me?”  
A pause, in which her parted mouth closes.  
His grey eyes turn to that storm again, as if he cannot bare to stare at her. “When I did not come to you like this, did your heart call out for me? Did you want me next to you? Did you want me to apologize for every terrible thing and every terrible word?”  
“Yes,” a soft breath.  
“Did you wish you could make me a better man?”  
“Yes.”  
A pause from him, that same muscle in his jaw twitching. Then a ragged whisper, “Have I run out of time?”  
Say yes.  
Do not be foolish.  
He has tricked you once. He may trick you again.  
Alina looks at the ring he holds. “For what?” She asks.  
He looks at her, expectant.  
When she simply stares back, Aleksander slowly takes that one step that separates them. And she can tell herself as many times as she can that this is not real, that he’s not really here with her, that this is an illusion and nothing else. But Alina cannot deny that that’s his smell, that’s his warmth slipping into her bones and into her heart, and if she does lean in to kiss him, she has no doubt that he will taste the same as he always has.  
“For what?” She repeats, looking him at him, watching him as his eyes trail over her face, that same mixture of mad desperation and hope and love clinging to him. “To apologize? To love me?”  
“Yes,” he says. “Have I come too late?”  
Alina has to tip her head back slightly to watch him, and only then does she realize that he has leaned forward, their chests pressing together. He is drawn to her as she is to him, and nothing in this world, not a war and not a people, not a country and not an illusion, can push them back.  
Madness, she thinks as she lifts a hand to touch that untamed curl at the back of his neck.  
Insanity, she thinks as her heart stumbles when he closes his eyes, leaning into her touch.  
Foolishness, she thinks as she brings her lips to his.  
She was supposed to tell him to give up this war of his. To choose peace.  
Instead she ends up asking him to choose her.  
As she has chosen him.  
His lips are warm, and there are no other flames or fires that could quite make her feel this warm. His eyes stay open, stuck to hers as she moves her lips against his slowly. He is suspicious, she realizes. He does not believe in this one truth.  
So she makes him believe.  
Alina wraps her arms around his shoulders, giving herself over to that kiss, that warmth, to him. Her eyes close on their own accord, and nothing has ever felt so real than this, the way his body slowly relaxes against her own, the way his stiff hands move to wrap around her frame, and the way he tilts her head back to kiss her fully.  
Thunder crashes down onto them, and it’s as if the skies are furious at them. For their selfishness in choosing each other instead of mud in their shoes and blood in their mouths. Instead of choosing a battlefield.  
She can still feel his surprise as she angles her lips to his, even when he pulls away to breathe. Like she’s as desperate for him as he is for her. Maybe this was always the way it was supposed to be, Alina thinks. They were meant to be weak for one another, and darkness was meant to love the light.  
Aleksander has her pinned in place, one hand stroking the side of her face, his lips gentle and urgent and soft and hard against hers. It leaves her spinning. He leaves her floating.  
Have I run out of time?  
Have I come too late?  
When he pulls away from her lips, those words hang in the air above them, and stay in his grey eyes, now so soft, so gentle, so uncharacteristically his, staring at her. She is used to steel, not grey spring clouds.  
“Sunrise is still a while away,” he murmurs to her, forehead resting against hers. She hears the request clear between the words.  
Alina designs a smile, because she cannot help herself. She feels like she is glowing. And by the way that he pulls back to stare at her – she believes that she is.  
“Will this be your last goodbye, then?” He says, his face falling.  
She sees that hope slowly dissolving in his eyes as the reality sinks into him. As the war looms closer. As the whole reason why she came to him draws nearer and nearer.  
Alina strokes his cheek, and he leans into that touch.  
“Yes, Aleksander,” she whispers to him, letting her hand drop from his face. “This is the last goodbye.”  
His eyes are panicked, his heart erratic against her chest.  
Until Alina says, “I do not wish to say goodbye to you once more.”  
Her last goodbye. He finally understands it.  
There would never be another one – because she chooses to stay. Stay with him.  
She chooses him.  
His sharp intake of breath signifies his surprise.  
And she’s suddenly out of breath, waiting for a reaction that doesn’t come. She touches his cheeks, willing him to speak, to do something.  
He smiles instead.  
A brilliant, shocking smile.  
Like the unexpected, early warmth of a spring morning that has the small hints of the summer to come clinging to it.  
A smile she has never seen before.  
It shocks her to the core, sends a pleasant warmth all through her body, starting down her spine. It cracks her in half, and Alina only has the sense to smile back, feeling delirious.  
“I-“ he is without words. So he touches his forehead with hers, and says, very softly, “Alina. My Alina.”  
“Choose me too,” she says to him, fingers entwining in his hair. “Say you will end this war. Say you will be safe from harm, and I will still have you like this, smiling and happy, when it is over. Tell me it is not a trick.”  
“It is not a trick,” he breathes.  
It cannot be. His warmth is real. His happiness is real. Alina feels it – and it is as true as the kiss he gives her. Even in this realm of their own making.  
She feels her feet leave the floor. One second she is kissing him, and a second later they are on his bed, and she is on top of his chest, her chin resting on her arm, and she is staring at his clear eyes, tracing the clean shaven jaw, the imperial beauty of his face.  
Alina is chuckling, grinning, shaking her head at him, at the smugness she finds in the glint of his eyes, in the tilt of his lip.  
“I adore it when you laugh,” he says, like a love-struck fool.  
Alina rejoices in the calmness of this moment, in the quietness of this place that-is-not-a-place, in this forgotten world of theirs, in the gentle movements of his chest underneath her as he breathes. She calmly traces the curve of his jaw with a finger, slowly, like she never had a chance to.  
They have a lot of firsts to get to.  
“What?” he asks, eyebrow curving at the way she looks at him.  
“You’re different,” she says, thumb now delighting in the perfection of his bottom lip. “I know that when I see you again you will be in armour and wearing that steel look on your face. I know that I will only see this side of you behind closed doors. But I do not mind. I do not mind that the world does not get to see this side. As long as I do.”  
“Do you not mind the darkness?” He asks quietly.  
“I have never been afraid of the dark, Aleksander,” she says, voice steady. “I will take you, as you are – the good man, and the man that gave in to the darkness once. If you choose me, I choose you.”  
He stares at her, eyes dancing with hers, light and dark both. Aleksander says, “Marry me then.”  
She shakes her head once more, scoffing a tight laugh. “Why.”  
“Because you can,” he says, kissing her cheek, her throat. “Because you want to.”  
“You do not read my mind.”  
“I read your eyes, and that is enough for me,” he says, pulling away. A gentle thumb strokes her cheek. “Marry me.”  
“Leave this war,” she asks back.  
They stare at each other, levelling one another. Aleksander says, “I have never won when it came to you. I do not doubt that I would have crawled to you eventually, and given up on everything anyway. In the end, I wouldn’t have been strong enough.”  
“Do you really see it as giving something up?” She says, observing him.  
He says carefully, “I had the same convictions and ambitions for a long time, Alina.”  
“And have those changed?”  
He watches her momentarily, and then he’s holding up a ring in front of her face.  
An answer enough.  
Alina smiles down at him, briefly, before pushing the ring down. “I won’t marry you to prove to you that my heart calls out to you.”  
He mimics her smile. “Alright, fine. Then make it a gift,” and waves the ring in front of her.  
“Aleksander,” she complains.  
And he kisses her.  
Gentle, playful kisses. And as he does, Alina wonders how much there is still to discover from him.  
She is right, however.  
By sunrise, she will meet him in the middle with Nikolai and the other grisha. He will wear that same look in his eyes, and he will not be smiling, and he will not be open and vulnerable and bowing his head. She knows this Aleksander, the one that sighs against her lips and pulls her onto the mattress while smiling into the kiss will not exist in a room full of people that he does not trust.  
But this-  
This is everything.  
Her back presses against the mattress, and she is dangerously close to let her hands drag over the front of his kefta.  
The storm still roars outside, and Alina only presses closer to him. Let the Saints rage at them.  
“You are not too late,” she murmurs to him, before leaning in to take his lips again.  
So, until sunrise, Aleksander takes his time.  
He takes his time leaving his whispered apologies on her neck, her collarbones, her throat. He takes his time righting his wrongs on the shell of her ear and the crook of her shoulder. He takes his time, and reminds himself that he will forever bow to her, forever take his time with her to love her the way he always wanted to. The way she always deserved.  
For all the trust she put in him, he would not fail her again.  
Alina stays, and for all his promises, she too promises this is her last goodbye.  
He falls asleep with his face buried on the crook of her shoulder. Her arms around him, his kefta a blanket above them both, sheltering them from the wrath of the skies.  
Alina stares at his sleeping form, hoping to everything good in him that he will be true to his word. There are flickers of doubt in her heart still, but she pushes them aside the moment his hand tightens around her body, pulling her closer in his sleep. Her name is a murmur on his lips.  
The man clad in black. Now hers.  
Maybe he has always been hers. The way she has always been his.  
Before she leaves his arms for the last time, Alina places a gentle kiss on his lips, and he stirs awake. Though he knows he will get to hold her soon. Soon enough.  
She smiles at him, like a dream, light pouring all around her – happiness all around them. His Alina kisses him one more time.  
“I will be with you soon,” she murmurs to him when his arms try to keep her near.  
The memory of her words doesn’t leave him. He recognizes the truth in them.  
By sunrise, he wakes and can still smell her, feel her, taste her, hear her.  
By sunrise, a war is over.

**Author's Note:**

> What did you think? I'm still absolutely in love with these two.  
> Leave me your comments/opinions/suggestions! I will try to respond as soon as I can <3


End file.
